Where Is God?

If you google that question most of what you get are explanations of why God allows so much suffering and proofs of God’s existence. For locations you get only: “everywhere” or in a “different dimension” or “hidden” or “inside you”; I have not found anything more specific. This is unfortunate because knowing where God is could reveal much about what God is. We can learn where he is by examining how he got there, a subject about which we do have some knowledge.

Our species has a powerful need to find reasons, to know how and why. Many conditions and events have no obvious explanation and are attributed, by some people, to unseen, mysterious powers. In antiquity, before the dawn of science, such happenings were very pervasive. To explain them various spirits with magical abilities were imagined. These spirits were mostly capricious, fearful and demanding. Often icon surrogates of them were made. Rituals, aided by the placebo effect, were invented to influence, cajole or placate them.

As societies became larger and more complex spirits morphed into gods; rituals morphed into worship and religions were born. Usually one god was imagined to be more powerful and was more venerated or feared than the others. For the Abramic religions -- Judaism, Christianity and Islam -- the supreme god became God. The remaining gods were eventually abolished, to be replaced, in Christianity and Islam, by angels.

The important takeaway is this: all of these spirits, gods, God and angels are not existent entities; they live only in human minds; they are mere figments of imagination, which, unlike reality, is unconstrained.

In this context it is worth noting that throughout “A History of God” (Random House, 1993)* -- the excellent seminal book by Karen Armstrong, who is not an atheist -- gods and God, as well as spirits, are treated as concepts not as actual beings.

These days, even though almost all of what once bewildered our ancestors is now explained or at least explainable, most people still believe there is a God of some kind. However, when they are questioned for details, one finds a plethora of God characteristics and versions, from the creator-supervisor of the universe and everything in it (who is demanding, loving, caring and trustworthy or demanding, jealous, vengeful and capricious or both); to a mere initiator of the universe; to an unknowable supernatural “something”. In short, God is whatever its believers-cum-creators concoct.

So, God, gods, angels, etc exist in human minds, no where else, especially not in any genes. They, and deeds attributed to them, are imagination supported by (usually willful) ignorance, nothing more.

Replies to This Discussion

But these answers are only assumptions and opinion of thought and not facts, which would have been far easier to just put them down on paper or in a book not claiming it came from a deity, and be honest of it was being a thought up idea.

My favorite response: Two young brothers were rather mischievous, and often in trouble. They played practical jokes on the neighbors and teachers. Were often teasing the neighborhood girls, and generally were very good at making nuisances of themselves. Their parents had tried everything they could think of to make the two behave. They had grounded, suspended privileges; they had even had the local police lock-up the boys for a little while. Nothing worked. Finally, they turned to their minister at church. He had the parents bring in the two boys separately so that he could counsel them. The younger brother seated himself in front of the pastor, not concerned, because he had dealt with tougher cookies than this minister. The minister sat for a few minutes glaring at the boy. Finally, he rose from his seat, leaned menacingly over the boy, and demanded in a booming voice, "WHERE IS GOD?" The young man, taken back, didn't respond. Again the minister demanded of the boy, "WHERE IS GOD?" The boy suddenly burst into tears and ran from the room. His brother grabbed him, and asked, "What is it? What did he say?" His younger brother responded, "We've in big troublenow! God is missing, and they think we did it!"

But seriously, "GOD" is like a child's mother. He was mankind's conscience until he was old enough to know the difference. God is like Santa Claus, or the Easter Bunny. A fantasy to be outgrown. Now, if only man WILL out-grow this idea.

Haha! I liked that. I sort of got a hint of where it was going once the pastor asked the question. I want to share a story that's a bit similar, but I think this story illustrates Zen Buddhism fantastically, even though it's a story about a Christian. You may have heard it before, and if you haven't, maybe you'll catch a where its going before you arrive at the end:

A devout christian was living in a town when a flood broke out. The streets were filled with water. He stood quietly in the middle of the main street. The water rose up to his waist, and a man in a boat came past. "Jump in," the man said. "No," answered the man, "my faith lies with God, God will save me". The boat disappeared. Soon the water had risen up to his chin. But the man kept on praying. He knew that with his strong faith and life long belief, God would come and rescue him. Another boat came past, but again the man waved them away. He kept on praying as the water reached his nose. A helicopter flew low, and a man inside yelled, "Take the rope!" The man refused. And said to himself, "No. It will be God who will save me, he must!" Eventually the man drowned. As the man entered heaven, God appeared before him. The man said: "I believed in you, I prayed every day. Why didn't you save me?"

And God replied: "You know... I don't understand it either... I sent you two boats and a helicopter..."

A devout christian was living in a town when a flood broke out. The streets were filled with water. He stood quietly in the middle of the main street. The water rose up to his waist, and a man in a boat came past. "Jump in," the man said. "No," answered the man, "my faith lies with God, God will save me". The boat disappeared. Soon the water had risen up to his chin. But the man kept on praying. He knew that with his strong faith and life long belief, God would come and rescue him. Another boat came past, but again the man waved them away. He kept on praying as the water reached his nose. A helicopter flew low, and a man inside yelled, "Take the rope!" The man refused. And said to himself, "No. It will be God who will save me, he must!" Eventually the man drowned.

That's the end of the story, since he DIED, and when you DIE, you're DEAD. No going to heaven. No going to hell. No going to Purgatory. No going to your special planet for having worn Magic Mormon Underwear, and no 72 virgins.

That is the mainstream view. Although, no one truly knows. It could be that when you die, consciousness retracts into whatever higher dimension it came from in the first place.

Most people's notion of the afterlife (if they have a notion of it) are so mundane and anthropomorphized. Some people say that N,N-DMT is a glimpse into the afterlife, and if that's true, according to DMT, the afterlife is akin to a metamorphosis of some sort that's not particularly going to be designed to preserve your humanness or what you call your humanness or to set you on a cloud with lier and gown for the rest of eternity, but that actually the greatest adventure, the greatest adventures still lie ahead.

I sort of see the issue as one of scale or perspective. If we stay at the bottom rung of perspective, in the dirt and dust as it were, it is rather easy to search or suppose for 'god' and meaning. As we start to climb out of the mire, bigger questions present themselves, with the demand for 'bigger answers'. At some point we come to a place where the 'concept of god' is not very helpful, and fails to offer insight into details that now come to our awareness, but 'meaning and origin' can still elude.